Volkswagen Super Bowl Commercial Scores Big

Now that’s we’ve had a few days to digest all the chicken wings and baby back ribs from Sunday’s Super Bowl, we’ve also had time to digest the onslaught of new commercials from our nation’s advertising giants. What were your favorites? Funniest? Commercial that might actually affect a future purchase?

Being at a party with tons of food, 5 other couples and a handful of kids running and crawling around (including my own), it was a bit tough to catch all the commercials like in previous years. One of the first ads I remember seeing was the “Guy obsessed with cheese Doritos” ad.

“Hey, are you going to finish those?” “Sorry. They’re already gone.” “No they’re not. You left the best part.” Guy abruptly jams his co-workers cheesy fingers into his mouth. “Mmmm, cheese!”

Another good one was Snickers’ Lumberjacks spot. Richard Lewis and Roseanne Barr make the cameos in this one. All we really need to know in this one is that Roseanne Barr gets absolutely mowed down. Describing it wouldn’t even do it justice.

Hahahahaha! Oh man, that doesn’t get old!

I was a little disappointed in Mercedes Benz’s ad featuring P. Diddy. Diddy historically does great commercials, Super Bowl or not. I still think his Pepsi Truck commercial from a few years ago is my favorite Super Bowl ads of all time. This years’ Benz commercial seemed really anticlimactic. Once Diddy came in the picture, I was hooked, but only to be let down by the featuring of the new car line. I wanted more Diddy!

Our favorite commercial here at the office comes with good reason. Being a pest control company, we thoroughly enjoyed Volkswagen’s ad for the new Beetle. I didn’t even know it was for VW until the very end, but for 25 seconds I was really, really interested and entertained by this little beetle’s race through the forest as he slid past Mr. Centipede and raced by the praying mantis boxing match. The rest is history.

Sure, we might be a little bias, but it was an awesome ad. It grabbed your attention from the beginning. The music definitely helped. The race scenes along the ground were creative and humorous. For being a commercial with no dialog, it was fabulous.

To our defense, we’re also not the only ones that think so. In a study just released by Alterian, an international marketing group, Volkswagen has had the most social media conversations dating back to Dec. 1, 2010. Of those conversations, VW is also ranked #1 in both highest positive sentiment (22%) and lowest negative sentiment (3%). More than two-thrids of those conversations and mentions happened on micro-blogging sites. We’ll safely assume Twitter was the main channel.

I’ve since gone back and taken a look at some of the ad spots that I missed and I have to say there are some pretty good ones. But I’m sticking with my first impression on this one that Volkswagen’s ad was the highlight of this year’s Super Bowl ad wars.